Who is Dean Blunt?: The most enigmatic maestro of the modern era
So you’ve started a new band, eh? While it might be tempting to follow the traditional routes to stardom – releasing new albums at two-year intervals, performing regularly in order to gain exposure to a wider audience, conducting interviews where you tell your origin story as though there’s anything remotely unique or interesting about your existence – but what if you chose to do things a bit differently?
Why not adopt a new persona, refuse to play live in a conventional sense of the word, fabricate contradictory stories and release music as and when you feel appropriate with little to no fanfare? The idea of transforming yourself into some form of enigma in order to turn heads seems very alluring, but the trouble is, there’s no way you can follow this path authentically without it either feeling contrived or experiencing an irreversible ego death.
It’s virtually impossible to know if anyone has ever met the real Dean Blunt. His entire artistic existence is formed around smokescreens, shitposts, and crafting works of art that bizarrely manage to feel disconnected from the history of pop music at the same time as embracing it with open arms. One might argue that this feels like nothing but a ploy to grab attention, and a deliberately engineered way of setting one’s self apart from the status quo, but there’s something about the way in which Blunt conducts himself that feels as though you’re getting the most genuine expression of his identity at all times.
Born Roy Nnawuchi, the Hackney-raised artist has spearheaded many equally mysterious projects over the course of the last couple of decades, including the improvised noise project Bo Khat Eternal Troof Family Band, as one half of the avant-garde duo Hype Williams alongside frequent collaborator Inga Copeland, and as a member of the abstract grime outfit Babyfather. However, while Blunt’s involvement in the aforementioned acts is easy to trace, exactly what he has contributed to some of them is harder to determine.
For example, Hype Williams has been described as an “18-year relay project” that was initially started by Denna Frances Glass and her motivational speaker husband, Father Ronnie Krayola, and Blunt and Copeland have both since ‘departed’ the group to make way for new torchbearers to assume full creative control of the group.
However, Blunt’s fingerprints remain all over the group’s output in all of their incarnations, and it’s up for debate as to whether all of these personnel changes are down to Blunt’s decision to add to the lore of the group. Bo Khat, while supposedly boasting a few additional members to Hype Williams, appears to simply be an extension of the very same project, though information on them appears to have been wilfully obscured from the public domain.
Musically, all of Blunt’s projects are abstract in nature, and while the samples he occasionally uses might seem familiar to lovers of the classic rock and pop canon (see Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, Big Star, etc), the ways in which he takes these recognisable elements, isolates them from their original context and pits them against his sparse arrangements and strained croon add a layer of unease to the experience of digesting his work.
Albums such as The Redeemer and Black Metal provide the most accessible entry points into Blunt’s catalogue, yet neither of them are conventional in their presentation. To call it dream pop is not to compare it to the likes of Cocteau Twins or Beach House, but to compare it to the recital of a half-remembered soundtrack to being chased through a corridor to nowhere. It is dreamy music, but for the sort of dream that leaves you asking questions rather than seeking answers.
While there’s an undeniable sense of humour about Blunt’s work as a solo artist, to call it all a joke would feel as though it were denigrating the undeniably artistic aspect of his endeavours. In a rare, early interview for Under/current, Blunt said of the artistic process: “That’s what art is, you immerse yourself in it, you either do it or you don’t.” While Blunt’s commitment to the bit is unfaltering, he appears to assert that none of his hijinks are done without serving some sort of purpose. “Art is meant to evoke something,” he added, “even if it’s disgust. I really hate indifference.”
That being said, one can still make art that is meant to be taken seriously while being completely unserious. While Blunt remains somewhat straight-faced in his scarce public appearances, on the inside, he probably can’t help but chuckle to himself when attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of an audience who are always trying to second-guess his next move.
His latest move, the Lucre EP that was released for free on New Year’s Day, is a musically straightforward record that sees him continue his collaborative streak with Iceage’s Elias Rønnenfelt and electronic producer Vegyn. Considering this is the same man who sent a stooge to collect an NME Award on his behalf, attempted to sell a toy Mini Cooper stuffed with nuggets of weed on eBay, and who inexplicably chooses to introduce himself as Glenn Danzig on Q&A panels, Lucre feels like a softening of Blunt’s usual maverick ways – but expecting any given thing from Blunt is futile. You don’t expect his work to follow any predetermined guide; you experience it for what it is.
In a world where genre boundaries continue to blur, Blunt’s unorthodoxy feels trailblazing. Never mind being ahead of the curve, he manages to eschew conventions by establishing his own arc from which he can freely deviate and continue to confound listeners, whether or not they have any prior familiarity with his work. A maverick, an enigma, a prankster – call Dean Blunt whatever you want, but his work is the embodiment of abstract art in its most unfiltered form.
